When John Paul II stated that
evolution was “more than a hypothesis,” he wisely steered clear of stating
exactly how much more. That is, while affirming some aspects of evolutionary
theory as having been verified, he did not issue evolutionary theorists a blank
check from the Vatican.
In particular, he made clear that a purely materialistic account, especially in
regard to human beings, must be regarded as woefully insufficient.

His wisdom is especially evident
if we examine the claims of an upstart school of thought, aesthetic Darwinism.
Aesthetic Darwinism asserts that all human art and literature can be explained
in terms of Darwin’s
principle of natural selection, or more exactly, sexual selection.

In the words of proponent Denis
Dutton, aesthetic Darwinism is part of a larger attempt by evolutionists “to
understand the psychological and cultural life of human beings in terms of
their genetic inheritance as an evolved species. … Evolutionary psychology
extends the findings of Darwinian theory to the
working of the human psyche. In particular, it treats our mental capacities,
inclinations and desires as adaptations developed in the last two million years
— since the Pleistocene era.”

The problem with art and
literature — and indeed, all expressions of the human mind, from drama to
mathematics and science itself — is that mere survival of the fittest doesn’t
explain them very well.

For example, we can imagine that a
cheetah running 61 mph has a slight advantage in catching a gazelle over
another cheetah who only clocks 60 mph, but what if we found a cheetah that ran
6,000 mph? Why would it have so much excess speed?

Well, the same problem arises for
evolutionary theory in regard to the human mind. We can see how having slightly
stronger reasoning capacities in hunting a deer might be explained by natural
selection. A man might need them for survival. But why do human beings have
minds that can design and solve complex, entirely abstract mathematic
equations? This ability has no survival benefit at all. Why the genius of
Shakespeare? Why Mozart? Why Einstein?

Darwin had an answer. He admitted (as do our contemporary
evolutionists) that mere survival of the fittest was insufficient to explain
certain extraordinary traits, even in the animal world. So he offered a
theoretical loophole, so to speak. Whatever cannot be explained by natural
selection (mere survival of the fittest), can be explained by sexual selection.
His famous example was the peacock’s tail.

As Dutton explains, the peacock’s
tail is so gaudy and impractical it actually seems to act against the survival
of the splendid bird. “This huge display, far from enhancing survival in the
wild, makes peacocks more prone to predation. The tails are heavy, requiring
much energy to grow and to drag around.” So, why have it?

Darwin’s and Dutton’s answer: The
extravagant tail is more attractive to peahens, and so … the gaudier the tail,
the more likely the peacock is to mate. “This seems to be nature’s point;
simply being able to manage with a tail like that functions as an advertisement
to peahens: ‘Look at what a strong, healthy, fit peacock I am.’ For
discriminating peahens, the tail is a fitness indicator, and they will choose
to mate with peacocks who display the grandest tails.”

The “peacock principle” explains
everything from cave painting, to Mozart’s Requiem Mass and even the Mass
itself. All that is distinctively human, all that displays a godlike genius
such as the paintings of Michelangelo, the Sistine Chapel itself, Shakespeare’s
Hamlet, the novels of Jane Austin and
Leo Tolstoy, Bach’s “Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring.” One
and all are reducible to sexual selection.

Sound a bit far-fetched? Let’s
return to John Paul II. While many have heard of his now famous statement that
evolution is “more than a hypothesis,” few have read all that he said. In the
paragraph immediately following his “more than a hypothesis” statement, John
Paul states, “A theory’s validity depends on whether it can be verified; it is
constantly tested against the facts; wherever it can no longer explain the
latter, it shows its limitations and unsuitability. It must then be rethought.”

Do the claims of aesthetic
Darwinism hold up? Can they be tested? If so, how, and
against what standard?

Let’s begin with the standard
provided by the Catechism of the Catholic Church. In a glorious section
entitled “Truth, Beauty, and Sacred Art” the Catechism maintains that “Truth is
beautiful in itself” (No. 2500). It is “the rational
expression of the knowledge of created and uncreated reality,” and “is
necessary to man, who is endowed with intellect.”

Note the clash? While our rational
capacity certainly does help us survive, and while some may be attracted to the
brainy, our capacity to know is good in itself, a fundamental, defining
characteristic of human nature as made in the image of God. And, therefore,
what we really find attractive has nothing to do with survival or sexuality at
all. We find truth itself to be beautiful.

Further, the natural beauty in the
world that we likewise find so attractive is the result of our essential
natural religious reverence and awe. It is the foundation of our love of
sunsets and our desire to engage in science itself.

“Even before revealing himself to
man in the words of truth, God reveals himself to him through the universal
language of creation, the work of his Word, of his wisdom; the order and harmony
of the cosmos — which both the child and the scientist discover — “from the
greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of
their Creator,” “for the author of beauty created them.”

And what about
art?

Art is “a distinctively human form
of expression; beyond the search for the necessities of life which is common to
all living creatures, art is a freely given superabundance of the human being’s
inner riches. … To the extent that it is inspired by truth
and love of beings, art bears a certain likeness to God’s activity in what he
has created” (No. 2501).

Well, how does that fit with the
“peacock principle” of aesthetic Darwinism? Obviously, it comes at human art
from the opposite end. Rather than reducing our artistic impulses to mere
sexual impulses, the Catechism asks us to take them to be exactly what they
appear to be — works of creative genius, sure signs of a godlike capacity to
reach far above mere survival, far above mere sexual attraction, and scour the
heights and depths of our being, searching out the splendor of beauty and
truth.

But even aside from the Catechism,
except for those who are completely blinded by a reductionist
ideology, we know that works of human genius cannot be reduced to echoes of
sexual attraction. Who could read Hamlet,
experience its rich depth, its breathless revelations of the human soul, and
think it was merely the result of Shakespeare’s sexual strutting? Who could
mistake Handel’s “Messiah” for a mating call?

Only someone driven by a kind of
mania to explain all that is great by all that is small. Darwinism is just part
of a larger movement of reductionism that included Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud and
a host of other materialist luminaries that have been trying to convince us
over the last century and a half that we are mere animals, and that all that is
most noble in human nature, all that reaches for eternity, all that speaks of
our being made in the image of God, all that draws us to God is mere pretense
on our part.

But as John Paul II said — and I
repeat — “A theory’s validity depends on whether it can be verified; it is
constantly tested against the facts; wherever it can no longer explain the
latter, it shows its limitations and unsuitability. It must then be rethought.”

Benjamin Wiker is a senior
fellow with the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology and a senior fellow at
the Discovery Institute. His latest book is A Meaningful World: How the Arts and
Sciences Reveal the Genius of Nature.